Stop Looking at Role Models to Do the Dirty Work for You

This is a guest post by Hulbert Lee, @hulbertlee.

Role models are great to give us inspiration or motivation. You may have some role models of your own right now. I know I have some of my own, and it still amazes me to this day the certain work ethics of famous people.

It leaves me in awe to wonder how famous comedians like Jay Leno can work through a day with only 4 to 5 hours of sleep a night, or how famous bloggers like Steve Pavlina can wake up at up 5:00 AM every day full of energy, or how famous wine-collectors like Gary Vaynerchuk can work 18 hours straight talking to people about wine. Doesn’t that get boring?

I used to think, “Wow, if I could be like them, my life would be great.” Then I hit a wall. Nothing significant happened to me for about a year, and I realized why. It felt great to have that role model spirit next to me at all times, but it was also weakening me at the same time. Ironic, huh? Not really… I know it sounds kind of counter-intuitive, so let me try me explain.

When you look up to someone all your life, someone that’s always there who gives you hope, courage, motivation, inspiration, excitement, desire, or what have you, what happens one day when they don’t have that same impact on you anymore? Who do you really become? Who are you? Are you nobody? Do you feel empty? I know I did… I wondered who the heck I was. I wasn’t a star. I wasn’t a celebrity. I wasn’t someone famous. I was just another person, among the billions of others out there.

I think too often, we gain confidence from people we will probably never meet in our lives called role models. Role models come in many different forms. Some sell you their ideas for $47 per month; others charge you $100 per hour session. Some can be found from audio tapes to self-help books or from videos to articles. This is all great. I’m not saying you can’t learn anything mind-blowing from them, but when you indulge yourself in the idea that you need a role model to improve your life, that’s when something’s wrong.

A while ago in his Kung Fu Panda article, Dragos mentioned role models as being catalysts, nothing more. I wholeheartedly agree. Role models are here to get us that extra nudge, but they are definitely not here to do our dirty work for us, nor do they define us. Ultimately, all of that comes down to us and nobody else. But that’s good news. I think all of us are capable of becoming whoever we want to be, but it comes down to whether or not you believe in yourself. Here is a strategy outline to become the greatest role model that you can be.

A. Raise Your Standards

Tony Robbins has always told people that to have lasting change we must raise our standards. He says that everybody goes through life with a “should list” – “I should take out the trash.” “I should get a job.” “I should interact with more people.” “I should start getting work done today.” We all know what happens to our shoulds; they end up getting pushed back further and further away from us until they are completely forgotten.

But what if we start changing our shoulds into musts? These are two completely different things. I should eat this vegetables right now is a lot different than I must eat this vegetable right now! Try saying it aloud to yourself and you’ll see a big difference. One is 50% chance I’ll do it. The other is 100% I’ll do it. To raise our standards, we have to start turning things that we should do into things that we must do.

B. Have a Belief System

All role models have a set of beliefs that make up who they are. Human beliefs have been one of the most powerful tools over the last two centuries. Even when something can’t be seen or when others strongly disagree with you, our beliefs are still as true and real to us as this article you are reading right now.

I’m sure you have seen people who have crazy beliefs do crazy things. But to them, it’s real. It’s as simple as that, and if you were to get inside their head, it might be real for you too. Write down a short list of what you would like to believe even if you aren’t it yet. It could be, “I am a hard working millionaire” or “I influence the world in creative ways.” Here are a few of mine:

1. I write articles that people want to read and share them with as many people as I can.

2. I work harder than anybody else expects me to.

3. I live in the present moment.

4. I realize that the more internal pain I feel, the stronger I become (I have this one because I struggle with OCD).

5. I love my family.

Gary Vaynerchukís set of beliefs or rules that he followed were:

1. Love your family.

2. Work superhard.

3. Live your passion.

Write down a list of your beliefs and place them somewhere where you can see them every single day.

C. Envision What You Want to Achieve in Your Mind on a Constant Basis

In 1943, the world record for the mile was 4:02. This record stood for 11 years where almost everybody, including doctors, believed it was physically impossible for the human body to run a mile in less than 4 minutes. Then came a guy named Roger Bannister. He didn’t have someone to look up to in terms of running because no one had ever run a mile in less than 4 minutes prior to him. He tried and tried to do this, but his physical body couldn’t get him past that mark.

Because he couldn’t physically achieve this task, he had to start doing it mentally. He started to envision himself beating the mile in under 4 minutes over and over again in his mind. After numerous tries, he ran the mile again and this time broke it. He became the first person in history to run a mile in under 4 minutes. The following year, the 4-minute barrier was broken 26 times.

The point here is you don’t need to wait for somebody to prove to you that something impossible can be done. If you envision it enough times in your mind, that is the only proof you’ll need.

D. Prepare Yourself to Be a Role Model to Tens of Thousands of Other People

It’s good that you’ve raised your standards, that you’ve set your beliefs, and that see you envisioning your new self played out in your mind, but it’s time to put all this to the test, because every day is a test. In fact, Everyday is an opportunity – an opportunity to prove to yourself that you are an example of the beliefs that you’ve set out for yourself.

Imagine for a second right now that one day you will have to be a role model to tens of thousands of other people. Are you going to be a cover up story, or are you going to be a person who can back up your beliefs with examples from your life experience? When you have the mentality that one day, you’ll have to be a role model to people who look up to you, then naturally you’ll create a burning desire within you to become the best role model you can be to other people.

You have to always remember role models – even the greatest ones – all started as average people. The only difference between them and other people who complain all day about how they are not getting the results they want is that they were able to raise their own standards and follow through with their beliefs. No one else could have made this happen for them except themselves.

My final tip to this role model strategy outline is to be wise with time. Don’t waste it because you’ll never get it back. Use every day as a measuring stick to figure out where you are right now and how far you need to go. I hope that by following some of these things, you won’t have to rely on a role model to be your unique, awesome self.

About the author: Hulbert Lee is a aspiring writer who writes about personal development and success at his blog, FromBottomUp. Make sure you sign up for his RSS to receive updates or follow him on Twitter.

Solving The Wrong Problem

One of my oldest memories as a child is cleaning the house. I remember clearly how I started to use a broom – which seemed like a giant toy – and how I slowly gathered together piles of dust from all areas of our small apartment. It was something new and exciting. Although I was a kid (not older than 3, I guess), I know I wasn’t playing, because I had the task to take out all the dirt from the floor. I used the broom as a tool to get out all the dirt and did it consciously. At some moment, all the piles I gathered with my broom were loaded into a trash bin. I clearly remember how good I felt after the whole action. I eliminated the dirt. Did something by myself.

Fast forward 35 years: I’m writing a blog entry about one of the most subtle, yet incredibly important setbacks in our lives: inverse evaluation. The name sounds strange, but behind this name lies one of the most popular approaches in our world. It can be found at any age, in any culture, at any education level. It makes more bad than smoking and it’s more popular than drinking. Many people still consider it like something normal, although is one of the worst thing you can do to yourself. It’s the evaluation of things by the opposite of what you want to happen. Or, to be shorter: inverse evaluation.

It’s The Other Way Around

The best way to explain it is to analyze my first memory described above. As a kid, I felt this huge satisfaction when I took out the dirt from the floor. I finished a task and the result was great. I felt so good, that I was eager to repeat it instantly. Only there wasn’t anymore dirt in the house. I had to wait for a while until I was able to do the trick again. But when I did it, I had the same satisfaction. To be honest, the satisfaction was even bigger.

Now, suppose you’re trying to lose weight. You have something like 10 kilos over your normal weight. You start to exercise, control your eating habits, get slow on your sugar, and so on. In 3 months, you’re out of 10 kilos. Wow! What an accomplishment! You lost 10 kilos!

You run your own business. At some point, you want to cut some costs in order to streamline a little your cashflow. With a little bit of attention, you’re able to cut 5000$ from your expenses. Wow! Can you imagine that? I just cut 5000$ in expenses from my own business! Am I good or what?

Started to understand where I’m heading? Not yet? Then read on.

You don’t want a bigger pile of dirt, you just want your house to be clean.
You don’t want to lose 15 kilos next time, you just want to keep your weight at a normal level.
You don’t want to cut 7000$ nest time from your business expenses, you just want to naturally grow and maintain your business.

That’s inverse evaluation. You measure things by their opposite.

The real goal is to have a clean house, not to produce (and happily eliminate) more and more dirt. The real goal is to be healthy all the time, not to lose more kilos every few months (after you worked hard to put them on you, of course). The real goal is to provide value through your business, not to measure your success by your economies.

It’s the other way around. And still, we don’t get it.

Shift Your Course

Measuring things by their opposite is very dangerous. It’s tricky because is closer to us than the real stuff. This inverse evaluation is easier to understand because it’s measurable. It’s easy to understand that single atomic action of getting out the dirt from your house every two weeks. It’s so convenient. Every two weeks you get your dose of self-respect and satisfaction. Clean your life. Lost extra weight. You see?

Seeing things as they are is difficult because you’re inclined to get satisfaction from atomic actions. You trained yourself to react to small doses of actions instead of being part of a continuous flow. Keeping a clean house – as opposed to get the dirt out every two weeks – means making small adjustments all the time. You’re doing a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow. You don’t let the dirt to accumulate. In fact, you lose completely the notion of dirt, and you’re only working with the notion of clean. You don’t do single atomic actions. You’re in a continuum of cleanliness.

It’s the same in all other areas: be healthy (instead of focusing on weight), be successful (instead of focusing on money). And it can go all the way up, to the top of your life.

Let’s start another example here: suppose you have a lot of enemies and you decide it’s time to convert them to friends. In abstracto, this is a very healthy choice. It will be really good for your soul and it will win some karma points on the side. So, you start to practice compassion, you start to learn how to apologize and in a very short time you convert several enemies into friends. It feels so good, that you want to do it again. But, surprise: you’re out of enemies! You converted them all! Now what? You start making some new enemies, of course.

The real stuff means not having enemies at all, eliminating the very concept of enemy. Being friendly is the thing, not converting enemies to friends.

Indulging versus Being

Some of you may think already at concepts like polarization or attachment, in its buddhist acceptance. If you do that, good, it means you know where I’m heading. But knowing the concepts is a thing, applying them is another one. For me, one of the easiest way to alleviate my inverse evaluation episodes is to assess if I’m indulging or being.

Ok, let me explain. Indulging means you’re doing something to balance a situation: you come from work, you’re tired, you need some relaxation. Forget about the outside world, have a drink, a chat with your spouse, maybe some sex. Or a dinner out. Or a quick gym session for some endorphins. In a few hours your energies are back to normal. That’s indulging.

Being is different. You’re ok as you are. If you’re tired, that’s ok, you don’t need any reward, nor a miracle medicine for that. Just let the body recover in its own terms. If you’re stressed, let the stress dissolve by itself, don’t apply an antidote. If you’re happy, don’t think at something sad, to “balance” it. Just be happy. Don’t try to balance your current situation for the sake of equilibrium. There is no such thing as equilibrium, you’re moving all the time. If you really want to go to the gym, just go to the gym and feel good about it.

Don’t go because of something, go for something.

Indulging will always call for more and more imbalance in your life. Just being will take your life as it is.

Indulging will always create inverse evaluation: you’ll need more dirt to make your house even cleaner, more fat just to feel better about losing it, more enemies just to have more and more epiphanies of converting them into friends.

Where are you right now? Are you indulging yourself? Or are you just being, with all the good and bad of your life?

Do It For Yourself – who’s benefiting from your actions?

Remember that we started this series with a fundamental sentence: you are the most important person in your life. You, and only you, are responsible for your actions, for their outcome, and for the level of energy that fuels you as a result. You’re responsible for your wealth or poverty, for your relations, for your mistakes or successes. Or in a simpler way: you’re the only one responsible for your life.

In the first post we formalized the way you interact with the world, which is based on a 4 steps path:

1. intention
2. energy
3. action
4. outcome

And each of your action will respond to 3 simple questions:

1. how you do it?
2. why you do it?
3. who’s going to be the beneficiary?

The answer to these questions have a direct impact on the energy you can use at every moment in your life. Each answer can influence dramatically your overall energy as human being, or, to be simpler again, it will shape your entire life.

If you just come here I recommend that you should first read the other posts in the series, although they wouldn’t be mandatory for this post. And in this post will talk about the third question, the final one:

“Who’s going to be the beneficiary of your action?”

The third answer is the most easy to understand: who is going to actually enjoy what you’re doing? Who’s at the end of the line? Who you try to reach? Who’s the target? If the second answer was about the “because”, the third is about the “for”: you do things because somebody drives you to, but those actions are for somebody also.

Most people tend to think they have a clear understanding of their targets. They think they obviously know the actual goal for their actions. And at the beginning of your life this is entirely true: a kid is always crystal clear about what he wants. You’ll never have doubts about that one.

But as you grow up, as you adapt to different communities, habits or beliefs, you tend to blend your action goals in a much larger picture. You start to do things for the benefit of others, just because you’ve been thought that. Is wonderful to do things for others, but as a result of a direct, non-biased experience. Do things for others because you feel good about it, not because they told you it’s good to do it. You start to do things because it’s an established habit, or because “it was always like this”. You start to do things sometimes not really knowing why you do those things.

And here comes what I call the fake-targets, or the fake-beneficiary: those persons, or concepts, or things for which you do things in your life, without even knowing that. Take a moment and think about all your actions and try to answer to this simple question: “who was the real beneficiary of that?”

It might happen that all you’ve done in your career was not entirely for you. All those extra hours of work were beneficiary not for you, because they failed to give you that promotion, but for the company. You even got a worse health after that…

In relationships, you do a lot “for the sake of the relation”. You compromise, you pretend not to see things, you accept situations or words that you shouldn’t accept, but you do this “in order to stick to the relation”. Guess what? Those relations never work.

Dig deeper into your life and try to find out all of the actions that you thought you’ve done for you, but actually they had another beneficiary: starting from school, from your job, from your friends or so-called friends, from your family. You’ll discover – with a little bit of bitterness, in the beginning, I have to warn you about it – that most of the time you’ve been acting for other peoples. You’ve been feeding with your actions other beneficiaries…

Those are all fake-targets, as I already told you, they pretend to be something but they aren’t. Most of the time they pretend to be you, your desire for success, for a relationship, for a family or for prestige. But at their core they are nothing but cultural habits that you embraced without judgment. And that you’re actually feeding by giving them all your energy in your current stream of actions. Making them stronger and even more appealing as they grow.

It’s true: you cannot live in a society without adapting to it. And adaptation is nothing but a compromising process: you give something from you, part of your freedom, most of the time, in exchange from something from the society, wealth and respect, most of the time. Those actions are taking your energy and putting it back into the society. It’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you are doing in consciously. As long as you know every second who’s the real beneficiary.

You have to always observe what you do. You have to always know who’s the real beneficiary, in order to identify all of your fake-targets, induced either by the social conditioning, either by early thinking patterns or whatever context you want, but not you. You always have to chose your personal path, and most of this blog is about that.

It’s about learning how to do things for myself, because I am the most important person in my life. It’s about how to overcome my obstacles, being them simple but devastating habits like procrastination, or deeper things like my twisted roots. It’s a constant witness of my efforts in doing better and better. And is also a witness of my mistakes in the process. We’ve been born with a dark side too.

I admit, this requires more than average skills and ambitions. This is not a thing that you may do on a moderate level, because you cannot perform with your greatest potential without investing all your energy. It takes time and patience to learn how to do your actions, to find out why you do what you do, and to identify without mistake the real beneficiary of your life.

But the reward is huge. Is a life of unparalleled richness and fulfillment. A life of freedom and achievement. Of love and understanding. I’m not enjoying this life right now, I’m only glimpsing at what it can be. But I’m already on my path to it.

Are you on the path for the life that you deserve? If not, you can start right now. Just watch the way you act and put all your attention to it for a while. Soon you’ll be finding your own way to do things for yourself. As I told you, this is not an easy task and requires a lot of discipline and energy. There will be times when you’ll fell out of the wagon. But even if you’ll have your breakdowns along the way, you can always start over.

As long as you’re the most important person in your life.
[tags]personal development, personal growth, beliefs, motivation, success, productivity[/tags]

Do It For Yourself – who’s driving your actions

My first post in the series “Do It For Yourself” was about the “how” in your actions. If you come here directly, and didn’t have the chance to look at the whole series here’s a little recap, to help you better understand the concepts. First, and foremost, you are the most important person in your life. This is the fundamental concept in these series, and starting from this point we designed a simple action workflow. This workflow is really just a 4 steps path that you follow on every conscious act that you perform:

1.    intention
2.    energy
3.    action
4.    outcome

And for every action I saw 3 fundamental questions that you must answer every time you do something:

1.    how you do it
2.    why you do it
3.    who’s going to be the beneficiary

In this post I will talk about the “why”, and that “why” is usually the response to:

“You are doing that action to please you or to please somebody else?”

Every action you perform (or, to be a little more understandable, every thing that you do) has a cause, you do it for a reason.  That reason can be inside you, or outside you.  By “inside” and “outside” I understand two very simple areas: your conscious being is the “inside”, and what you can observe from this conscious being, without acting on it, is the “outside”. In a more simple definition, the “inside” is you, with all your integrated beliefs, and the “outside” is the others: people, social beliefs, concepts that you can observe but do not necessarily embrace or accept.

Every time the reason for an action is inside you, chances for the energy level to grow after the outcome of the action are greater. Because most of the time you preserve the energy in yourself. If the reason is outside you, chances that the energy level to go down after the outcome are greater. Because most of the time you are directing your energy outside you.

Let’s put it like this: if you do something because you really want to do it, the result will always be part of yourself. But if you do an action driven by an outside factor, your outcome – and, subsequently, your energy flow – will follow that factor, being it a person, a social belief or a concept that you don’t agree.

If this sounds to fuzzy right now, let’s have an example. We will talk about your required actions when you chose – and follow – a career. The choice of a career is always based on your beliefs about it. You know in your mind what a career is and, based on that knowledge, you chose the most appropriate one for you. Suppose you think a career should be something fulfilling, something that will not limit your freedom and something that you’ll be happy doing it. And, apparently, you chose your career based on this set of beliefs.

But instead of doing this, you focus on other things, like making as much money as you can in as little time as you can get, having much more properties that you can actually use, and hunting a social status based on your car, clothes and so-called friends. Doing this requires a lot of energy. You put as much energy as you can afford into this set of beliefs, and, before you know it, you really start having all those things. And to act upon a second set of beliefs, different from your initial one.

But, strangely enough, you don’t feel happy about it. You have more and more money, more and more stuff, and more and more respect from those who share the second set of beliefs, those based on money and social acceptance. Your time is more and more limited because you have to manage all this, your freedom is surrounded by more and more properties that starts to act like walls, and your fulfillment feelings are starting to fade away.

You do believe that your career should be nice but you do the opposite. Why? Because your actions are driven by the other set of beliefs, the set based on money and external proof of well-being. The “why” in your actions is outside you. Without even noticing, you succumbed to a social pattern and replaced your internal driver of your career with an external one.

Where is all the energy that you put in this flow of actions going? Well, outside of you, sustaining the second set of beliefs. Every time you initiate an action related to your career, you give away your energy, because the real reason is not congruent with your real self. And yes, you will soon start to be tired, bored and sad. Your drain yourself out of energy.

The real drivers of your actions are as important as your beliefs about the reality. Even if you have and follow a positive set of beliefs about reality, you can – and most people do – follow other action triggers that your internal ones. This is why the “why” of an action is a fundamental question. By following only your internal reasons you are constantly add to your energy field. Your outcome will always be part of you.

But let’s be honest about one thing: you can’t really and always act only and only by your internal reasons. Sometimes you are on “auto-pilot”, sometimes you are consciously and deliberately choosing an external reason, or sometime you are just compromising. But most of the time you are confused, and you really delegate your power to an outside event, letting it trigger your actions.

How can you know that you are acting upon an internal reason and and not upon an external one? Well, to be short, you will have to learn this all of your life. It’s a process in itself, because you are continuously changing your internal reasons and the external are also in a constant process of change.

The rule of thumb here is: follow your emotions. Follow them with trust because your emotional feed-back system is one of the most precise and precious tools that you’ve been blessed with. If you are doing something out of joy, with enthusiasm and passion, chances are that you are driven by an internal reason. If you are doing something with sadness, fear and pressure, your actions are most probably triggered by an outside reason. Whatever fuel your optimism, must come from within your real self, and whatever feed your pessimism most come from an external source.

One other thing you may do is checking against your beliefs. If an action is performed in congruency with your general beliefs, must be coming from the inside. If you are driven to do something that is not in sync with your beliefs, chances are that you are forced by an outside driver.

The edge between inside and outside triggers is a very delicate thing. Because is very easy to be dragged in what I call “in and out traps”: things that you do for others, but you think you are doing for yourself. In other words, you are deluding yourself. And a vast majority of people can earn a master degree in deluding themselves.

All of the actions you are doing over and over for helping your friends, co-workers or other mates, but you don’t feel any positive emotions in doing them are “in and out traps”. You do them “because of them”, and not for you. There are outside reasons for doing it, and your inner self doesn’t really feel any positive emotions out of it. These types of traps can be identified when you are being excessively polite, extremely socially fit or just shy. Most of the times all of these situations are triggering an outside driver for your actions. You can do them, of course, if you want, but your energy flow will be drained.

At the opposite, there are “in and out traps” that you may consider outside drivers, but they aren’t. Suppose you are doing something nice for your family, like taking them to a walk, or giving them a present. This might look like an external driver, because the family might look like and outside trigger, but it really isn’t. Why? Because you are doing this with happiness and love, most of the time. Your emotional system is telling you: do it, I love it. So, even if this is looking like “outside reason” it really is an internal one: you’re doing it for yourself.

Basically, the “why” question is about your ability to circumvent all the “in and out traps” that you may encounter along the way, and follow only your heart.

In the next post of the series I will be talking about the last question an action should respond to, and that is:

“Who is the real beneficiary of that action?”.

[tags]personal development, personal growth, beliefs, success, productivity, motivation[/tags]